Lit "Vector Prime" Trailer w/ Mark Hamill Remastered

Hey, everyone!

Due to an excess of time at home during this coronavirus pandemic, I decided to remaster the "Vector Prime" commercial that Mark Hamill did as Luke Skywalker, and which aired on SciFi Channel and F/X in October of '99. I've finally finished it, so here is the remastered TV spot:



It is notable for a few reasons... one of which is that Mark reprised his role as Luke for this, and I believe it's the only time he played Jedi Master Luke in any content whatsoever beyond the OT during the pre-Disney era of Lucasfilm. His dialogue as Luke in this is as follows: "I have fought the worst of all wars and witnessed the redemption of evil. I've seen balance restored to the Force. But order can turn to chaos, as it did when I was born. Now, with my loved ones and loyal allies, I face a new challenge, unlike any before. And I'm not sure if this time we can win."

It's kind of an interesting nugget from the past, and for fans in general, especially of the EU, the fact that this commercial exists is kind of cool, so I figured I'd put it here for people watch and discuss if they liked. Del Rey really went all out for this series, and it's no wonder it shot to the top of the New York Times Bestsellers like this when you have Luke Skywalker himself promoting it. Anyway, having enjoyed the series and now having remastered this commercial, I thought some of you might enjoy it as well.

 

Very cool. I wonder how in character Mark got for this.

 

Fortunately, in this case the job was made easier for me by the fact that the Temple is cropped out of the TV 4:3 frame in the original ad.

I also agree about the other ads! I'd be interested in the Jedi Search ad. It is also a good question, wondering how Mark approached this. He sounds very in-character in the narration, with a kind of a gravity of a Jedi Master.

 

The irony about being Pre Disney is Mark said he signed on for the ST before he knew about the Disney buy if Starwars

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

 

Love it! NJO series FTW!

 

While there are many fanmade NJO youtube vids out there... I wonder if one might do a high quality one intercutting this trailers monologue with NJO art ran through some animation app to give it some motion-esque feel and on top of that intercut it with Sequel trilogy scenes that befit the NJO.

I am not expert at cutting and making vids (yet) but I dabbled in many art apps that can do wondrous things. So Why not? The folks that do entire movie deepfakes, faceswaps, reface, faceapp etc. stuff might get the results just right for a neat little NJO trailer that is beyond a still image diashow.

Anybody with the video skills to try this? I can recommend some apps I used to get art talking and copy cover art character faces on to videos. But beyond that I need help.

 

The closest thing I can think of to this that exists is a little-known attempt at a legitimate NJO trailer -- with voice acting of a scene of Vector Prime set to schematics and images of the scenes from the books and some dramatic music. It was developed for an unfinished NJO project 12 years ago for X-Wing Alliance. Although it is not necessarily at the heights of professional voice quality, I do still think it's pretty cool, worth sharing.

As for your other ideas, I don't know enough about how deepfakes are made to contribute, but it sounds interesting for sure! Certainly with the growth of fan films and animated fan films its possible to imagine something like that being made for the NJO. I'd definitely welcome anything like that!

 

You know, not really relating to this particular topic but more on the subject of reflecting on NJO in general, I ran across an interesting tumblr post the other day by someone who had just read Star by Star, the darkest of the series, for the first time. They said that, while we know that the series ends on a mostly upbeat note now, to someone reading the book when it was first released, who'd have to wait months for the next book to come out and years for the entire story to finish, it must really have seemed like the writers were trying to tear down all the victories of the OT.

The reason I found that interesting? The same complaint is leveled at the ST today.

 

To me, ANY Star Wars project continuing on from ROTJ would've faced this complaint, no matter the execution. By continuing the war in some form, you are undoing that ending to a degree. And there's arguments to be had about the post-ROTJ Legends timeline's constant, uh, wars and how almost nihilist that premise is. But funnily enough, there's only a 6 year gap in Legends between the Galactic Civil War and the Vong War, which is WAY less than the 30+ year gap between the OT and ST.

 

To the above points, I think in this thread I would want to maybe try to steer clear of the ST discussions, but briefly I will just say there are some significant differences on that front between NJO and ST -- almost too many to count, a lot can be said on this -- but when it comes to new challenges disrupting/threatening the old, I think context is important. The impetus for the NJO wasn't just out of nowhere -- there had been a decade of stories, of triumph after triumph for our heroes from the OT, where no one died, and although fun, everything resolved itself each time. Our heroes grew and learned but it was a very positive arc. The NJO was an attempt at more dramatic and mature stories, and it was built up to over books before hinting at the Vong. Star by Star is probably the bleakest part of the war, and it is meant to make you wonder if maybe they won't make it out of this thing -- which is a key part of good storytelling -- almost like the end of ESB. I know when I read it, not knowing what would happen, I felt that. But the key part of all of that is that it wasn't just wasteful -- our heroes, and in particular the new generation, were growing and learning and having to deal with all of this.

So yeah... a big difference is in how you handle things -- if you just tear things down, yeah, that's not great. Or if you revert things or make sudden changes that are inexplicable, that's also bad. But if it feels like a continuation, and in light of the danger, something new, more mature, more meaningful is built in its place, I don't think people would turn their nose up at that very much. That's not really "undoing" but new challenges. If our heroes learn something from this, it's not really just a destruction of before, but a challenge and a change. A dose of life but also a dose of wisdom. Life doesn't get fixed at one point, there are future lessons and challenges, and new generations. But as long as there is wisdom obtained and authenticity felt it can connect in a legitimate way to people. So while I would try here to avoid comparisons to the ST, I just wanted to make that point. The how is a very crucial distinction -- stories will always disrupt things, as that is the nature of a story, but it is in how you do it that counts. Just a few thoughts on that.

Anyway, having said that, I know there is a thread devoted to talking about the ins and outs of the NJO so maybe that is more suited for that... this is really more just for the commercial, or related to the NJO media promotion. On that note, it is kind of cool that this poster was made, along with the ad.

 

...Heh. I've noticed that font before in some of the individual books, but man, seeing that poster reaaaaally makes me think the NJO really was trying to deliberately ape the B5 five-year-arc thing.

 

B5? Never heard that term before; what's it mean?

 

Babylon 5, 1994-1998 TV series, which made use of that font or one very similar to it.

(...I'll admit that was one of my more inside-baseball posts, since it's also specifically a joking reference to discussion from the old 181st threads.)

 

I think with the ad, and that poster, I love how they were really pushing this book into the mainstream, to get people who didn’t know what the EU even was onboard, with Vector Prime as a “jumping-on point.”

 

It was 1999, B5 (and DS9) had successfully concluded, both demonstrating you can do longer arcs in TV so everyone tried to get in on it despite not understanding what they were committing to.

B5 got over 100 eps to tell its story, NJO? Just under 20 books. The difference between the two mediums? Don't think that got picked up either.

 

In some ways NJO was like the MCU but in book form.

It is a story of 19 episodes but each Episode is about 6 hours long. Which is upwards of 114 hours of story.

As to how it works as a sequel, it is the most original of the Sequels (Thrawn, Dark Empire and ST itself), as it doesn't deal wit the Empire but a new enemy with a new way of doing and thinking.

It also built upon what came before and showed how the characters had all grown. It also made sure to show us that things were GOOD before they go bad.

It is dark and gets dark, but it doesn't end dark it ends with triumph and uplift.

The stars shine brightest in the dark. Then the day comes and the new dawn shines out the clearer.

 

To be fair, having 20 books to cover a story like this is still ridiculously long by the publishing standards of books at an adult reading level. Hell, I’ve found NJO daunting to get into because of the sheer amount of material you have to read. Knowing that there were plans for even MORE books still boggles my mind. It’s possibly the reason why Del Rey pushed back on the amount of material in the LOTF and FOTJ sagas, and they even outright said they were going to get back to a Bantam-style mix of trilogies and standalone novels after FOTJ wrapped. Which happened... for about a year and a half until the big reboot.

 

The problem I had is the books failed at conveying the sense of time, would have helped NJO to not be lumbered with that.

 

Yes a more clear sense of how long the war has lasted would have been helpful. But as I said they had over 100 hours of story time to use so it wasn't small.

 

Where's that "it doesn't work that way" GIF?

The big missed opportunity NJO had was to use the space to depart from the usual win-loss-fightback-to-final-win structure. It only did this with the last two books, would have been more effective earlier. Then again, maybe miraculous enemy collapse at the end is deemed mandatory for SW. It was in both versions of RotJ and now RoS, so why not NJO too?

 

TROS took that to the extreme, with First Order ships falling out of the sky for seemingly no reason.

 

Now that is LUKE, not Jake Skywalker,lol